Extreme Ways
by fireand'chutes777
Summary: My vision of why Shego broke from her brothers and eventually wound up as Drakken’s enforcer. Rated "M" for 1st chapter; T after that.
1. Chapter 1

**Shego: Extreme Ways**

To be on the safe side, I have rated this story "**M**" ("R"), mostly because of content in this first chapter; a proofreader has said it's probably only a "high T" (PG-13), but, again, I wanted to err on the side of caution. That said, the content of the remaining chapters is mostly "T" for violence and language.

* * *

The story takes place in the "OLS" universe, at least in terms of general timeline. That is, I structured the events of the show "Disney's Kim Possible" to take place between 2003 and 2006 (Kim's freshman year was 2002-03, her sophomore year 03-04, junior 04-05, senior in 05-06, and the events of "OLS" take place in April 2007, her freshman year in college), and then worked backward from there.

Shego was born in 1976.

Aside from a few incidences mentioned in "The After," I have tried to use the (limited) amount of canonical information provided by the original series to expand why Shego broke away from her brothers and eventually wound up as Dr. Drakken's enforcer.

* * *

Finally, a huge amount of credit and attribution is due where it is rightfully due.

I was quite wowed by the work of an FF-dot-net writer who goes by the name "Binkmeister," particularly his story "Shego's Birthday." That short story formed the kernel of inspiration that lead me to write all this. Since that story seems to have gone dead, I adopted it, and it forms the scaffolding of chapter two.

I must also give accolades to RavenStarFire. His fic "Replacement" is very impressive, and his description of the comet strike in his chapter nine is amazing. With his blessing, I adopted the first italicized section in chapter nine; I've scattered the relevant section across chapter 3 and a later (currently unwritten) chapter so it fits better with my story flow.

Enjoy, and please review!

* * *

_Extreme ways are back again;  
Extreme places I didn't know;  
I broke everything new again,  
Everything that I'd owned;  
I threw it out the windows, came along...  
_

_Extreme ways I know_

_Will part the colors of my sea;  
Perfect color me..._

_Extreme ways that that help me,  
Help me out late at night;  
Extreme places I have gone,  
But never seen any light;  
Dirty basements, dirty noise,  
Dirty places comin' through;  
Extreme worlds alone –  
Did you ever like it then?_

_I would stand in line for thissss...  
There's always room in life for thissss..._

_Oh baby (oh baby)  
Then it fell apart, it fell apart;  
Oh baby (oh baby)  
Like it always does, always does..._

_Extreme sounds that told me  
Helped me down every night;  
I didn't have much to say;  
I didn't give up the life.  
I closed my eyes and closed myself  
And closed my world _

_And never opened up to anything  
That could get me along..._

_I had to close down every-thing,  
I had to close down my mind;  
Too many things could cut me,  
Too much to make me blind;  
I've seen so much, in so many places,  
So many heartaches, so many faces,  
So many dirty things...  
You couldn't even believe..._

_I would stand in line for thissss...  
It's always good in life for thissss…_

_Oh baby, oh baby;  
Then it fell apart, it fell apart;  
Oh baby, oh baby  
Then it fell apart, it fell apart...  
Like it always does, always does..._

"Extreme Ways"

-Moby

**Chapter 1**

A warm, bright beam of newly minted sunlight shot between the woman's half-closed eyelids, blinding her. Cupping a hand beside her left eye to block out the glare, she rolled over on the sun-warmed cotton sheets. Patiently, persistently, however, the sunlight poked at her until she slowly opened her eyes, blinking a few times to clear out the sleep fug and spots from the sudden flood of light.

It was morning. Solid columns of light slanted in from two compact windows of the corner flat, making the polished outlines of the furniture glow and brass sparkle. The room was softly quiet, filled only with small morning sounds – intermittent traffic humming down in the street, a door slamming a ways off, water _thrushing_ gently through pipes buried deep in the walls. A quartz-mechanism desk clock pealed off the slow seconds with the soothing regularity of a metronome, its faint, gentle ticking surprisingly distinct after the ruckus earlier.

The woman lounged languorously on her back atop the snarled covers, arms folded comfortably beneath her head, completely nude. At utter ease in her skin, she made no attempt at self-conscious modesty – she'd worked damn hard for her body, and she was damn proud of it. What with frequent bruises and a handful of scars, she knew every inch of it.

Her elevated body temperature warded off the usual chill of bare skin in open air. Shifting position slightly and snuggling a little into the bedspread, she savored the near-erotic sensation of the smooth fabric sliding against her tingling, hypersensitive skin. A sheen of sweat felt good as it slowly evaporated off her pale skin. She drew her left leg toward her chest, knee forming the point of an A, her right leg resting casually across the thigh at a perpendicular, toes dangling.

Digging her fingers into the pillow, she propped her head up slightly and glanced askance out a window on the wall ten feet to her left, her line of sight just clearing the sill. She could see the peaks of squat, shingled roofs poking into a cold, pale, whitish-blue sky. Fresh, startlingly green shoots and leaves poked tentatively upward from a handful of roof gardens, growing well in the first gasps of spring despite the caution of snow-ice patches still clinging to north roofs and in the shadows of chimney pots.

Scattered irregularly through the old-country dwellings, modern highrises glittered in the early sun. Thin wisps of stringy clouds reflected off the glass sides of the slender monoliths. Halfway down, the buildings peered superciliously over the short houses and solidly built mid-rises crouching at their feet, reflections transforming the streets below into an upside-down neverland.

The woman smiled a little. She always liked the contrasts in this part of the world...

Her listless musings were broken as a large, sloppy mass of covers to her right twisted noisily onto its back, emitting a low, drained groan as it slowly regained consciousness.

She reached over and playfully tousled the mop of unruly blonde hair beside her. "…'Mornin', sleepyhead."

Her partner groaned again, resigned to waking up, and began wrestling with the near-straightjacket of sheets he had mummified himself into after falling like a rock into sleep.

Eventually, panting slightly, he flopped the covers mostly off himself and fell still, listening to the ticking clock. His breath hung in the air like an expectant cloud. The edge of the fold-back stopped just below his belly-button – he didn't have quite her body-confidence, or skin temperature.

Satisfied, he glanced over at her. Their eyes met. The pair stared fixedly at each other for several awed seconds before the blonde tossed heavily supine onto his pillow, staring blankly at the ceiling, and dazedly ran a hand down his face.

"_Hellig dritt…_" he muttered drowsily, rumpling the bridge of his nose with his palm, "What…. the hell… was _that_?"

The woman giggled a little through her teeth as she grinned. "Aaaahhhhhh… I _told_ you were gonna feel that in the morning..."

He returned his hand to his forehead, massaging his brow with the tips of his fingers. "..._Helvete_ ... I haven't gone like that since basic training..." He glanced over at his crumpled navy-blue greatcoat, flung haphazardly over the back of a chair. The twin gold stars of _Oberstløytnant _epaulet insignia sparkled back at him in the morning light. "Ahhhhh, shit... my _Oberst_ is gonna raise hell if I'm not back by oh-ten-hundreeeeeeed..."

He drew the last word out into a groan.

The woman ran her fingers through his hair, gently kneading his scalp. "Don't worry... you've got, like..." she squinted at the desk clock, "...Little over an hour..." Using one finger, she began teasingly tapping the grouping of three freckles beneath each of his eyes.

In response, he reached up slightly and brushed his fingers in gentle, wispy circles on the smooth, soft skin of her pelvis, then traced the tips of his fingernails slowly upward along her coronal plane, one of her erogenous zones. Her torso stiffened, breath whistling through her nose as she inhaled sharply. Reaching her underarm, his hand detoured further upward and massaged her right breast for a few moments. He watched, a little detached, as her hands curled, arching back on themselves slightly. Keeping it up until he saw her fingernails beginning to dig into her palms, he meandered back down along her median line, fingers finally settling into the trough of her pelvis and leg, palm gently caressing her hip.

"Daaaaa-aaaammmmmm..." he murmured softly, awed by the sensation, "...You're still warm..."

The woman nodded, eyes closed, still lost in a torrent of oxytocin.

"…That was cool… earlier… how you were able to… light the candles... wi'th..."

"Yeaaahhhhhhhh…"

Finally opening her eyes, she again nestled her arms beneath her head and stretched, back arching. The skin on her chest tightened and her breasts stood to attention, little cream pyramids subtly catching the light of the sun. She settled back down with a pleasured sigh and the quasi-conversation flickered out, dissolving into a cozy silence that didn't need filler.

After a few minutes, the blonde propped up slightly on his elbow, gazing driftedly at her dully-glinting waves of black hair spilling over her shoulders and upper arms. Opening his mouth a little, he made a few gulping, hesitant false-starts, and the quiet drowse of the room became sharper and less comfortable at each one. Finally, he managed to place his words, tiptoeing as though through a minefield. "...I, uh... noticed... you didn't ask me to put on... a...?"

Her eyes, which had slid shut again, popped open and then narrowed mischievously.

"Betcha haven't been able to feel like _that_ in a while!"

Taken aback, he blushed slightly, a faint pink band warming beneath his eyes, and nodded quickly.

The woman laughed. "...Elevated body temperature kills everything off… I think it's normally, like, around 107. Just like a damn _chicken_." She laughed, harsher this time. "Th' glow's endothermic, though, so when I light up, my body temp goes a little hypothermic."

"Whew…" He flopped down supine again. "No worries about the Sicknesses, then...?"

"Nope... Never had to worry about STDs..." Her mouth crinkled into a leer. "...And thanks for reminding me…" Leaning across her body to her right, toward a night-table on her side of the bed, she swirled her index finger around in an open jar of KY, settled onto her back again, aimed, and inserted. A rim of green flared a little around the circular gap, and her lower abdomen lit up slightly from the inside.

The NATO air force colonel watched the procedure out of the corners of his eyes, too exhausted to be much aroused.

"Whuzzat for...?"

"…Jus' killing your product placement… The chance of something getting through is, like, zero, but gettin' preggers would really screw up my curves... No use taking chances..." She smirked a little, withdrawing her finger and tracing it in a seductive S across the man's chest. "…Only one thing left…" She rolled over slightly. He heard the bedsprings creak as she reached for something on the floor, and he began nodding off as he nestled deeper into the warm heat of the covers.

The man's eyelids widened to their stops as he suddenly found his own service P80 pressed flat against his sternum. Before he could open his mouth, the slide cracked rapidly back and forth. His body went rigid as it digested the first soundless contact shot, then became increasingly limp on the remaining nine. His pupils contracted into dots of surprise and pain. He stared up at her in shock for a moment, and then his eyes glassed over, clouded, faded, and rolled back.

The mercenary lifted the smoking gun off the body's chest, mouth twisting between revulsion and pride at a job well done.

"…Killing you."

Since the gunshots destroyed his chest cavity, there was very little external bleeding besides a deep red stain soaking down into the mattress. After setting up the gun and his hands to make it look like a suicide, the woman ignited a thin film of plasma in her palm while holding the gun, effectively torching any telltale fingerprint oils left on the grip.

The vixen rolled off the bed and dropped to her knees, rooting in a small carry-bag stuffed between the legs of the nightstand. She unearthed a slim box of latex gloves, tugged out a pair, and _screenched_ them on, snapping the rims deftly against her wrists like a doctor. Digging a folder out of the flat bottom of her bag, the mercenary withdrew a 'handwritten' note, peppered it with the dead man's fingerprints, and left it prominently on a dresser.

Times had been tough on the world's militaries since the USSR collapsed several years before. Discharges – and the fear of discharge – were common, particularly in Europe; retirement stipends were often far too meager to support the life an officer had had at-grade; and for many soldiers, the military was their life and soul. The letter explained the officer's deep fear of discharge in the face of an imminent downsizing, that he'd hired a prostitute for one last go, paid her handsomely, and sent her on her way. She'd had no part in this at all.

She again applauded herself as she twitched the letter slightly to give it the right 'touch,' surprised at how well it'd turned out. It had taken her a month of stress and danger to intercept all the needed writing fragments to feed into her current employer's mainframe. With mild annoyance, she remembered the M-13 had needed only a few hours to analyze the man's cursive and pump out a forgery that even his closest platoon-mates couldn't spot.

After glancing around for other traces of physical evidence, she stepped into the adjoining bathroom, still naked, and turned on the shower tap. Standing under the sharp needles of the showerhead, she stretched deeply, lengthening her spine as she leaned backward slightly, hands threaded together and extended above her head, cracking her knuckles.

"Uhhhhnnnnmmmm…."

The gloves felt weird drenched in water. She grimaced a little as the latex stuck tightly to her skin in some places and bubbled in others, but she'd been around long enough to know that anything, _everything_ in life left a trail. Like walkers through a field of grain, people created indelible tracks of their existence, no matter how well they tried to hide. As it was, she knew she'd left a trail of biologic a mile wide, but she hoped the trace of 'her' spinning out behind her – skin cells, strands of hair, sexual residue, stray fingerprints, her toe-prints on the shower tiles beneath her feet – would be explained away by the letter. That ruse wouldn't – couldn't – hold forever, but it usually gave her enough distance to stop the trail cold. Wearing the gloves in the shower, to prevent leaving prints on the gleaming chrome water controls, was a start.

Washing off a splatter of blood covering her chest and gun arm with a miniature shampoo bottle, she closed her eyes. Instantly, the face of her still-warm hit seared before her, his shocked, betrayed eyes boring into her own.

"Ungh!"

She recoiled, blind, smashing painfully into the shower controls. Crushing her eyelids even tighter together, she knocked the mixer-faucet all the way right with a bump of her hip. At the same time, she reached up and scrabbled at the showerhead, twisting it to an excoriating jet. Goosebumps erupted over her skin as she tilted into the freezing water, letting the painful stream drill between her eyes.

The faces always came back. In her twenty-two years, she'd seen, and done, enough killing to become numb to it, detach herself from empathy, contort her victims into nonentities, merely vehicles to her payday – but the faces always came back a little in REM sleep. Always. She'd found the echo effect could be damped significantly if she drove the person, and the deed, from her mind as soon as possible. Cold, pounding showers seemed to work best.

The woman stood in the shower until she was nearly hypothermic, until the burning image of her victim was overtaken and drowned by the miserable, unrelenting sting of frigid water. She got out, shivering, and toweled off. She gave her head a whip, and water sprayed across the wallpaper and mirror as droplets zinged off her long, raven hair. A Clorox bottle rooted out from beneath the sink erased her footprints from the linoleum.

Meandering back into the bedroom, her spirits lifted with her temperature. With her memories successfully repressed, the thing on the bed now held the same emotional impact as the beige window drapes. She collected her belongings and sex things and dumped them into her travel bag, cleaning flat surfaces for fingerprints as she did so. She knew she couldn't get them all. Finally, satisfied, she popped onto the bed and wriggled into her clothes. She'd researched the country's fashion carefully, and her dress was ubiquitous and inconspicuous – as inconspicuous as someone with her curves could be, anyway.

Dressed, she slung her bag over her shoulder and sashayed to the door of the flat. After checking the peephole to make sure the hallway outside was clear, she opened the door and stepped across the threshold, but then paused, undecided. Hesitating, she turned back to look into the room, scanning, feeling the unnerving prickle that she'd forgotten something important. Then it clicked. Leaning across the doorframe, she scrabbled at the thermostat control, cranking the apartment's temperature all the way down to the minimum, and set the timer for half an hour. This step would chill the body, slowing decomposition, and push the apparent time of death forward by fifteen to twenty minutes – more than enough time for her to clear the building.

_Some dickwad PI too smart for his own good's probably gonna notice the power spike..._ she grumbled to herself, _But by then..._

Striding at a brisk, confidant clip, she breezed through the deserted, elegant hallways. By this time in the morning, most commuters had left for jobs, and the corridors were empty. The only major issues were ones she had already planned for.

When she rounded the corner to the main array of elevators, she found, as she'd expected, a lone security guard leaning against the floral-patterned wall separating the two banks of lifts. His crisp blue shirt strained to contain the load of his belly overhanging his belt, and he rocked aimlessly back and forth on his heels as he stood beside his chair, clearly bored out of his skull.

The sight of a curvy young woman in a short tan trench coat and jade miniskirt, both clinging in all the right places, proved a welcome distraction. Arching his eyebrows appraisingly, he perched his cap a little higher on his head and stood up straighter. "...'Elp ya derr, miss?"

"Uh-yuh-huh, um, sirrrr," she said, putting on as much American Valley-Girl accent she was willing to stoop to, "Um, like, how'dya'cha get to, uhhhh," she hesitated for a moment, sticking out her tongue a little, feigning stupidity, "Vip-Vippetangen?"

She noted with mild distain that his eyes did the standard male "elevator," and her face was the last thing he got to. Suited her, anyway. It meant he didn't notice her ease a hand behind his neck, or a small flash of green a second later.

He stiffened as if under an electric charge, seeping a choking, muffled noise as his tongue glued itself to the top of his mouth. His eyes rolled up slightly and he crumpled down the wall, unconscious. Huffing and puffing, the woman heaved him bulkily up into his chair and contorted him into a sleeping position. Fat folds oozed slightly over the edges of the seat.

Standing, the woman cricked her back and dusted her hands off. Evaluating the practice-honed zap she had just delivered, she judged he would snooze for another five minutes or so. There would be a ten-minute hole in his memory, like a cigarette burn, roughly five minutes before the KO and five minutes after, erasing herself from time.

Turning casually away, she took the stairs, since she'd noticed last night that the lifts had cameras in them.

Finally, she reached the elegant main lobby, an over-gilded affair with a two-story cathedral ceiling. Loitering behind a potted plant, she visually swept the room for security cameras and remaining stragglers. She picked out the cameras at once, still in the same positions as last night. They were older models; stationary and without plastic shrouds. The receptionist would be a problem, but she had her nose buried in a tabloid.

Taking a deep breath, she began, walking a contorted, zigzagging path around columns and behind furniture to remain out of the CCTV line-of-sight and the view of the receptionist. The latter glanced up once, as the woman made her final break for the doors, but considered the call-girl she'd seen coming in last night with the _Oberstløytnant_ not a threat and promptly forgot her as she turned back to last week's scandals.

Flooded with adrenaline and the euphoria of success, the black-haired woman stepped out into the streets of Oslo. Over the apartment complex's threshold, she felt a thick wad of unmarked Deutschemarkspressed into her cupped, waiting palm. She knew better than to turn around and look.

Shego checked her watch. She had a contract that evening at nine in eastern Germany on an ex-KGB agent. NATO had promised her a quarter of a million.

Flagging down a taxi, she smirked again.

Life was good.

Oslo, Norway

9:28 AM UTC

April 16th 1999

To be continued...


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

June 6th, 1996

5:48 AM CST

A light drizzle diffused the blood and effluents oozing from the ruin of a man, crumpled in a trash-strewn Go City alley. Limbs and torso lay in a fallen heap, an occasional puff of vapor near some broken teeth and a weak mewling sound indicating the shattered hulk still lived. Sizzles and ozone flowed from a lithe figure crouched sumo-like above the pummeled body.

Great bursts of steam boiled off Shego's hands and shoulders, her raven hair plastered to her face with exertion and rain. She stood fixed above the ruined goon, her chest heaving, otherwise motionless. Rainwater drooling from leaky gutters and Shego's panting were the only other sounds in the deserted ghetto.

Her hands remained poised over the heap as if grasping a hidden ball, fingers splayed wide, every muscle taut, every tendon and sinew in her body stretched to the limit. Slowly, the young woman's deep breaths slowed, the gasps less labored, and her form straightened. Tiny rivulets of misty rain cascaded around her almond-shaped eyes and across the hard line of her mouth to drip unnoticed off her sharp chin. The face was beautiful, but the expression was terrifying. Bright green eyes stared down.

_Oh... my... God... That was incredible!_

Stepping away from the mangled henchman, loose teeth crunching unnoticed beneath her boots, she backed into a sooty brick wall and rested her shoulders against the grimy brick. Her shaking legs surprised her. The release from the last five minutes was the most intense, the most surprisingly sensual experience she'd ever had. Eyes closing, Shego relived the last few minutes, and the deep satisfaction she felt at seeing fear, then terror, rise in the goon's eyes as she pummeled him with blow after blow, long after he'd surrendered completely. She'd been sent by her brothers as an enforcer, to pump the thug for information about his superiors… but once she'd started punching, she found she just couldn't stop. The physical and emotional release of nearly driving the life from this henchman of a low-level villain filled Shego from boots to eyebrows, and her fingertips felt alive with an electricity altogether different than her usual plasma glow. Every inch of her skin felt hypersensitive, and the waterproof black-and-green outfit slid against her body with breathtaking sensuality as she breathed.

Her brothers would be here soon. The idiots would swoop in, as usual, expecting her to have made the collar for them so they could swipe glory and headlines. They had no idea what she was capable of, what she could - and would - do. Their narrow worldview couldn't encompass the kind of ecstasy she'd just experienced. Better not to be here when they finally stumbled into the alley.

Pushing herself upright on slightly wobbly legs, Shego peeked around the corner and made sure no one was near. With her newly-bolstered self-confidence, she strode out into the side street, never looking back.

_Never looking back..._ Shego grinned to herself. The feeling – which was culminating in what she was about to do – had been building for months, she now realized. She'd been unconsciously planning the act for weeks, but it'd been vague. Hazy. Unclear. But now that pile of human muck behind her revealed her way out with the blinding snap-clarity of a spotlight. Her path was clear, her choice was made; she felt lighter and more real than she had in years.

It was an incredible twentieth birthday present.

In one lithe, expert movement, she swung a leg over the saddle of her waiting motorcycle and settled into the seat. The ignition flared, a thin, choking keen. Then the high roar of the souped bike's 1340 cubic centimeters boomed off the sheer sides of the urban slot canyon around her. Torquing the throttle, she gunned it hard, just for the hell of it, leaving a thick black patch of melted rubber on the wet pavement. Wind snapped her long, rain-heavy black hair back as she thundered onto a main avenue, then sliced through an onramp onto I-290, on her way out of the city.

* * *

Tightly gripping the handlebars, Shego hunkered close to the tank as her modified Suzuki crotch-rocket swished past morning traffic as though it was standing still. She was in no danger of being stopped by a cop - they were accustomed to seeing her zoom around the city, usually in hot pursuit of some bad guy or other. They knew her aggressive yet skilled riding wouldn't be a danger to the citizens of Go City.

Skimming a sea of pale expressway under a pasty gray dawn, she swished gentle s-curves around other oh-dark-thirty commuters, playing chicken with side-view mirrors.

Speed and the thrill of threading heavy traffic always made Shego feel more alive, helped bleed the pent-up tension from her athletic body, but today even this usually visceral entertainment paled in comparison to what she'd just done. She used the time on the road to mull over what to do next.

She couldn't go back to that stupid island tower; that was for sure. After seeing the gory puddle she'd left back in the alley, Hego and Mego would want answers. _After puking their guts up first,_ Shego thought with satisfaction. _Wusses_. It wasn't as if this would be a complete surprise to them; even a moron as dense as Hego should have been able to notice the increasingly violent glee with which his sister attacked the "bad guys".

But she was certain they wouldn't let it go. They'd never understand. And she didn't feel like wasting her breath.

So time for her to go. She go. _Apropos_, she thought. The thrill of publicity and attention she received as a hero had waned long ago. Hego, and especially Mego, seemed to live for the glare of the flashbulbs and video camera, where even their dumbest comments (and there were a _lot_ of those) garnered front page ink. After the first year of hero work, Shego stuck to the background, even forgoing the idiotic mask the rest of Team Go affected. She was _always_ in character.

Which took a toll, she admitted to herself as she wound through a nearly-stationary traffic snarl. Boys were intimidated by her athleticism, her sarcasm, her brains, and not least her penchant for punching holes in cement walls when angry. The whole "hero" schtick didn't help either, putting her on a pedestal that few males her age had the stones to approach. Which was probably why she decided to take up gymnastics and judo. The straining and physical exertion was a release from the always-building tension. It continually took longer to dissipate the energy her young body produced, took more physical effort to calm the knots in her shoulders, the spasmodic clenching of her powerful hands. She'd pushed herself harder and harder, becoming an expert in physical movement and combat, and it worked - to a point. Dangerous, speed-filled pursuits had helped too. Lately, though, those releases had been less effective, less powerful. Nothing she did completely relaxed her anymore.

Except the vicious pummeling of that goon.

He'd deserved it, she knew. He was of the "stealing-candy-from-a-baby" class of beetle-browed petty criminal, without the brains or ambition to do anything except what some slick underworld boss ordered. Messing him up had been a favor for the gene pool. Nothing about her attack generated any pity within Shego, which surprised her a little. She felt no remorse. Just deep satisfaction. She knew she'd do the same again, and gladly.

The freeway split, and she took I-88 at random, continuing west. The wind and rain had chilled her, so she stretched even tighter against the body of the cycle, chin almost touching the speedometer dial, lowering herself out of the frigid slipstream and into the eddy created by the tiny windscreen.

The highway divided yet again. Deciding that her previous left had felt good, she carved another low, sweeping left onto I-355 and finally settled onto I-55.

Blurred suburbs flowed past, eventually changing to boring farmland and genteel estates. Shego had no idea where she'd end up, but right now, riding on, pushing on, felt instinctively like the right thing to do. She had no other personal possessions that would cause her to return, no reason to go back to the tower in the harbor. Below her in the under-seat compartment, she carried a Jansport stuffed with standard on-patrol equipment: survival gear for roadside emergencies, her wallet and credit cards, a brick of cash (used for bribing her way out of unpleasant situations, if her preferred method of blowing the place apart would have ended badly), several fake passports for undercover assignments, and a tiny synthetic sleeping bag, crammed into a compression sack, for stake-outs. Armed with a rechargeable credit card, she could stay out indefinitely.

She smirked a little as she glanced at the date on her digital watch, the digits distorted by tiny mist droplets clinging to the glass face. The significance of it had never impressed her until now, and the irony was sweet.

June 6th. D-Day. Liberation Day.

Go City had seen the last of Shego.

She sped on with the rising sun at her back.

* * *

Fed by the still-throbbing heat of parched asphalt, tiny dust devils whispered around the gas pump while Shego filled her bike's tank. So ancient its readout wasn't even digital, the pump squatted in the center of a small, sparsely-populated parking lot in front of the town's only diner. Shego eyed a yellowed plastic sign and its shаttered neon guts with distaste; even the term "greasy spoon" was too good for this ancient dive. _Greasy spork, maybe. Greasy used plastic spork.  
_  
But her stomach reminded her how long ago her pre-patrol breakfast in Go City had been. The day had flown as fast as she had; more than twelve hours of hard riding now separated her from that rainy sidestreet alley. Lethargically, she fitted the sleek cap firmly back onto her bike and plunked the battered gas nozzle back into its rusty cradle. Avoiding the peeling paint above the bent door handle, Shego walked into the diner and took a seat at the counter. About half the booths were filled, mostly with truckers whose rigs rested on the cracked pavement outside. A few yokels, out on "the town", noisily gossiped between booths while their scruffy children ran between tables playing tag.

Besides Shego herself, only one other person looked out of place in this dive, a young man a bit older than Shego but on the opposite end of the cool spectrum. He didn't have a pocket protector, but that was about the only thing missing. He sat huddled in a corner booth, shadows from the dusty air mostly cloaking him. A mud-flecked taupe backpack slouched beside him against the vinyl seatback. Shego wouldn't have noticed him if she hadn't been accustomed to doing a threat assessment wherever she went.

"...Nice outfit, sweetie," a cracked voice said from the other side of the pitted counter. The waitress tossed a menu in front of Shego. "Special's on th' front, we're outta the sirloin." Shego looked at the waitress, and was surprised to see how young she was under the wrinkles and crow's feet. The sun - and time - had not been kind to this woman.

The menu was nearly as ancient as the establishment, food stains covering the paper and nearly obscuring the dessert list, such as it was. The thin paper had soaked up so much spilled grease that it was almost translucent, like parchment. Holding the brittle paper up to the evening light that streamed in through a grimy window, Shego could see the type on both sides. Absolutely nothing looked interesting, despite her growing hunger.

She sighed. "...I don't suppose you have any salads," she asked, without much hope. "...Or Jello, even." Even wearing gloves, she handled the toxic menu gently, pushing it away with distaste.

Gum popped behind the waitress' nicotine-stained teeth. She looked deep in thought, then told Shego, "I... think we may have somethin', hold on and lemme check... Want something to drink?" Shego asked for a diet cola, not trusting the water, and nodded when the waitress suggested a day-old Caesar salad. She just hoped it had been refrigerated.

While she waited for whatever horror the salad turned out to be, Shego leaned back into the cracked low-back vinyl stool and thought about where she was going. Not anywhere in particular, and most certainly not here, not for long. She didn't think she was running from anything, but she really had no idea where she was going to.

Anywhere that her brothers weren't was a good start.

It wasn't like she had any permanent commitments. Her only family was a gaggle of self-involved goofballs, and her parents were long gone. Nor did she want for money; her share of rewards from nabbing various criminals amounted to a comfortable sum in her Swiss bank account. Of course, that hadn't stopped her from swiping gas during two stops earlier today... she shivered a little at the thrill of petty thievery. So much better than mindlessly following the herd; playing by somebody else's rules. It didn't compare to the whupping she'd given the goon early this morning, of course. But it was definitely the chocolate icing on her cake of freedom.

So for now, head west. It was certainly sunnier than the windy city she was used to.

Highway 55 had turned into I-44 long ago, and I-44 had become... she'd forgotten, and really didn't care. Highway cruising had become boring, and she'd turned off onto a smaller state road a few hours ago. She'd continued on her westward push, having no interest in the hot, sticky, humid climate of the Deep South. Doing a quick review of her ride, she dead-reckoned she was somewhere near the border of Arkansas and Oklahoma. The Ozarks, for certain; the winding highway had made for slower going, and she was unused to mountain riding, though it did not present much of a challenge in terms of technical skill. But beyond that... she had no idea.

Now she had time to stop and think, she wondered if she was unconsciously drawing herself toward the pulse of Las Vegas, or, slightly less tackily, Los Angeles.

_Los Angeles,_ she decided firmly to herself, the conclusion so strong that she actually nodded. The city was big, crime-ridden, and she could slip through the cracks easily.

Her salad arrived in a chipped plastic bowl, wilted and sad. It was better than nothing, barely, so Shego gagged it down with liberal swigs of soda. Not the greatest combination, and it definitely gave her cramps, but she did feel better after wrestling it down.

The sun was low enough on the horizon to stream directly into the diner's windows, but Shego wasn't tired. And there was no power on the planet that would keep her here in Podunk any longer than absolutely necessary. The town – and she used the term liberally – was nestled in the bottom of a river valley, and consisted of a single string of dingy buildings lining one side of the state highway, sprouting from a strip of sandy, chalky soil between the highway and an adjacent river like so many weeds. She'd only stopped because the mountains had eaten more of her fuel than she'd expected, and she didn't want to be stranded out in the middle of nowhere once night fell.

She watched a large group of yokels drag their whelps out the door and was contemplating whether or not to stiff the waitress when she saw two burly thugs thump through the doorway. They weren't truck drivers, not wearing matching maroon dusters, black leather gloves, and thick nylon utility belts. After an initial _en garde_, Shego sized them up and immediately settled down. She could take them, singly or together, without getting out of the stool. The only way they could hurt her was if she let them fall on her. They were big pieces of meat, but the way they moved spoke more of pig than steer. Without the brains or grace of either animal.

The pair stopped just inside the door and thoroughly scanned the interior. Their presence was soon noticed and conversation stuttered into silence. One goon gave a grunt and lumbered toward a dark corner where Shego had earlier spotted the pencil-necked geek. The second followed his partner, and both stopped in front of the sandy-haired young man, who was desperately looking for a way past the duster-clad menaces, surreptitiously squirming into his backpack's shoulder straps.

The first maroon goon spoke. "We kin do this th' easy way or the hard way… And we've decided it's gonna be th' hard way." His speech was slurred, slow and low. But it was better than his partner, who apparently only had enough gray matter to nod. The object of their wrath tried backing ever deeper into the filthy vinyl-covered bench, which wasn't having any of it.

Shego watched the show, along with the rest of the diner's patrons, but was conflicted. Her hero training urged her to step up and chuck Thing Two and Thing One through a window, thereby improving the interior decoration. But her newfound independence kept her in her chair, watching. She had no skin in this game, and was content to see how it played out. Kind of too bad, she thought, since the geek wasn't actually bad looking, if in need of a shower and new wardrobe.

But he was wilier than she'd thought. Surprising the meat squad by lunging first left, then right, he went boneless and slid underneath the table, emerging between two chunky sets of legs. He scrambled to his feet, patent leather shoes scrabbling on the ancient food-stained linoleum, and powered toward the door just ahead of his pursuers. His path took him near Shego, who swiveled to watch him flee. Just as he reached the door, the thugs came abreast of Shego and the second one flailed his arms, trying to keep his balance on the dirty floor. One meaty hand latched onto one of the backrest tines of Shego's barstool and wrenched wildly, unbalancing the top-heavy chair. Shego crashed to the ground and the stool came down on top of her, tangling her up in its long legs.

"_I… don't… think… so!_" she snarled, blowing apart the chair and sprinting through the door. All thoughts of paying for her food had disappeared.

Her retribution didn't take long. Before the first thug even knew his compatriot was down, Shego bounded over the limp form of the second thug and pulled the first off the geek, who had tripped on a large crack in the asphalt. One punch did the trick, and she didn't even have to light up her plasma.

The goon's head sounded like a hollow coconut when it bounced twice against the blacktop.

Unexpectedly, another set of arms wrapped around her from behind. Before she could fling them off, she heard a breathy "Thank you!" in her ear. She turned her head to see a mop of greasy hair and a big smile. He kissed her cheek. "Thank you!" he said again, and let her go.

"I-I didn't know they followed me, or could follow me, I thought I was home free, y-you know? And then they came stomping in like they wanted to pound me into the pavement, and I didn't know what to do and I would've probably been killed if you hadn't saved me!" It all came out in one long breath, which Shego didn't even try to interrupt. "Can I come with you? Please?"

Shego frowned, wiping off his kiss with the back of her hand. "You're _joking_."

"No, really, look, I'm serious, I took the bus here and the next one isn't due for hours and hours and they'll come around and then if I'm still here they'll get really mad..." Shego put a black-gloved hand over his running mouth to shut him up. His eyes darted around the parking lot and came to rest on the sleek black and green motorcycle parked by the gas pump. Backing toward the bike, he gushed, "I can ride second, you won't even notice me!"

The parking lot was beginning to fill up with gawkers, including the waitress, who waved a slip of paper of Shego. "Your bill! You've gotta pay your bill!" Behind her in the restaurant, people were goggling at the smoking wreckage of what used to be a barstool.

That was enough to make Shego want to leave, immediately. "Fine, hop on, but watch where you grab – or they'll call you Lefty, got it?" In three strides, Shego was on the bike and brought it to life. Her unwanted passenger hopped on behind her with surprising speed and grace and tightened his backpack tight against his thin shoulders. Tires squealing, Shego sprayed the dismayed waitress with gravel on her way out of the parking lot.

Shego had cruised past the town's dilapidated, paint-chipped police station on her way into town, and her lone potential adversary was a rusty black-and-white Chevy Caprice that she doubted could do zero-to-sixty in six hours. Still, years of fighting crime had taught her that complacent criminals were the ones that got caught, and she put thirty miles of hard, fast riding behind her before she eased off the gas long enough to talk with her passenger. "...So," she said over the slipstream, "Why were those goons after you? Did you, like, tie their shoelaces together, or call them a cute couple?"

The answer was a long time coming. At first, Shego thought his silence stemmed from her maneuvers at twice the 45-mile-an-hour speed limit. However, as the seconds lengthened, she noticed he was not quivering, and realized he was thinking.

"I... used to work for a guy," he said at last, carefully picking his words, "But... it turned out he wanted to use my inventions, my work, to do really bad things... So I quit. But I don't think he took my resignation well. I... _think_ he thinks I know things that could hurt him. ...Not that I ever would!" he added hastily to Shego's hungry look, "…But I don't think he wants to offer me an advance on my retirement plan, if you know what I mean."

"…Nice." Shego shrugged indifferently and concentrated on driving, a little disappointed he hadn't gone into more detail on the "really bad things."

Night fell quickly once the sun dipped below the valley walls, and though it was only June, the temperature dropped rapidly. It wasn't a problem for Shego, but she could feel her passenger's grip tighten, and she thought she felt him start to shiver. He had no coat.

They passed up and over two ridges of mountains in quick succession, and as she coasted down the back of the second ridge, the reflective tape of a roadside sign reared out of the gathering twilight. Squeezing the brakes slightly to dampen road noise, she pointed toward the advertisement. "I'm gonna stop at that motel up ahead...." They'd ridden at least forty miles from the diner, distance enough to pull over. "You can get a room, or something... and I've gotta use the restroom." He half-nodded, half-shook his assent.

The motel could've been a twin of the dilapidated diner they'd visited earlier. The two-story structure, tastelessly dolled up to look like a German timber-frame hostel, was wedged into a small bowl valley a river had carved eons ago. Shivering, her passenger stumbled off the bike and into the coffin-sized reception area. In the meantime, Shego stuffed the contents of cycle's under-seat compartment into a backpack and wheeled the bike around to the back of the motel, out of sight of the main road. Finding a quiet moment to herself, she leaned the bike against a thick decking post and sighed. This wasn't the ideal place to spend the night, that was for certain; but then, she realized she hadn't really considered _where_ she'd sleep once the sun went down...

_I guess the twerp's got his uses..._ she thought, shaking her head with a slight smile as she locked the bike against the post with a chain.

Walking back around front, she entered the lobby to find her passenger in the process of registering a room. The proprietor, a short, ratty-looking man with thinning brown hair, looked up from the front desk as a set of bells above the front door tinkled softly. His eyes widened slightly as he took in Shego's figure. Seemingly putting two and two together, he glanced quickly from Shego, to her passenger, then back to Shego, and his face broke into a singularly nasty leer. Her rider, absorbed in the paperwork, didn't notice the exchange.

Shego leaned sultrily against the desk, forearm resting on the chipped faux-wood veneer. As she winked heavily at the proprietor, neither he nor her rider saw her slip her left hand forward.

The receptionist's lewd sneer wilted and disappeared as Shego crushed his hand against the tabletop and began hyperextending his fingers. He squeaked and tried to pull back, but Shego kept his palm clamped to the desk and continued inexorably bending upward until she was reasonably sure she was on the verge of breaking his fingers. As the receptionist's mouth formed a wavering, softly-wimpering little circle and his eyes watered, Shego leaned forward until their foreheads almost touched. "..._Sick_ little _minds_ get them-_selves_ into _trouble_..." she murmured, just loud enough for him to hear, rhythmically punctuating her words with pulses of pressure. The owner nodded frantically, face whiter than her own.

"...And _not_ a _word_… _we_ were _never_ here..."

He nodded swiftly again, neck on a spring.

She smiled twistedly and released his fingers. "Good man..." The proprietor yanked his hands off the desk and backed into the wall two or three feet behind him, cradling his fingers and gasping.

Ignoring him, Shego leaned over her passenger's shoulder and saw he had rented a room as "Sheldon Smith."

"All done?" she whispered.

"Yeah… Just finished." He looked up and smiled cheerfully at the innkeeper, who tremulously handed him the room key, his eyes locked fearfully on Shego. He accepted the money tenderly from Sheldon, wincing as he worked the cash register with his traumatized hand. Giving the innkeeper a happy wave, Sheldon slipped the keyfob in his pocket and made his way up the stairs toward the room.

"...And, please, _please_, don't tell me that's your real name," Shego muttered, following him. There were no public restrooms; she'd have to use the one in his room. "But don't get any ideas," she growled as he turned the key.

As the door swung inward to expose the accommodations, Shego did not have her expectations exceeded, and she was glad she'd set them low. The room was dark, dingy, low, and continued the heavy half-timber theme. It couldn't have been more than twenty feet wide by fifteen long; the short wall formed part of the hallway, the door crammed in the bottom left corner of the room. The bed, a twin extra-long, was located slightly off-center against the right wall. To the right of the bed, a slim door opened into a tiny bathroom.

Furnishings were sparse. There was a wardrobe between the left wall and the bed's footboard, leaving a four-foot isle between the two. A small nightstand stood to the left of the bed, but beyond that, the room was bare. There was no carpet. Perhaps the only thing nice about the room was that it afforded a surprisingly good second-story view of the river floodplain through a jettied bay window.

Grimacing, Shego dumped her backpack beside the wardrobe, stripped off her gloves, and made her way to the bathroom.

When she emerged a few minutes later, Sheldon had turned on the lone overhead light and was tidying up the bed. Shego wasn't certain if she just preferred moonlight; the weak, yellowish overhead light highlighted the appalling state of the wallpaper.

Sheldon turned around as he heard her reenter. "Oh... hey." He gestured toward the bed, palm open. "...Do you want it? I think it's a double, but with the two of us, it'd be kinda, uh... be kinda tight..." He fumbled with his shirt collar, looking embarrassed he'd considered that sleeping arrangement, but recovered. "So... I'm fine with sleeping on the floor, if you want."

Shego arched her eyebrows, slightly touched by his offer. "Thanks... but..." she eyed the stippled, less-than-white sheets with disdain, "Dunno how long you've been around the block, but there's no way in hell _I'm _trusting motel linen…"

Digging in her backpack, she retrieved the sleeping bag stuff-sack, loosened the compression straps, and opened the roll-top. At her tug, the synthetic bag slithered out of the bag, expanding like a foaming magic trick. Snapping it once like a whip to revitalize the loft, she wafted it to the floor between the wardrobe and the foot of the bed. Dust bunnies scurried under the bed as it radiated a ripple of air at landing.

Smoothing out the bag's wrinkles, she looked up at him. "Floor ain't the greatest, but I've bunked on worse… So, hey, be my guest. Bed's yours."

"Thanks..." said Sheldon, now looking at the bedding with second thoughts. He gave the mattress a bump with his hip to square it with the metal bedframe. Digging under the comforter, he drew the top sheet forward and stuffed the loose end under the pillows, covering up unappetizing undersheet. Nodding happily to himself, he trotted into the bathroom and proceeded to brush his teeth with an immaculate travel toothbrush he withdrew from the chest pocket of his polo. Shego joined him a few moments later, declined the offer of his toothbrush, and scrubbed the front of her teeth with an index finger.

Finishing, Sheldon swung around the doorframe and popped into bed, fully clothed, and pulled the comforter over his knees.

Shego laughed dryly, a smirk twitching up one side of her mouth. "Cute."

"Yeah…" He laughed. The chuckle brayed discordantly, as though long out of practice. "'Specially after what you said about the sheets…" He trailed off. Resting his elbows on his thighs, he planted his chin atop his clenched knuckles, head canted slightly to one side. "...I-I'm sorry, if I've asked before, but... did you ever tell me your name?"

"Nuh-uh," she said shortly. "Sorry. Shego."

"_She-go_?" he repeated incredulously, "_That's_ a real-?"

"Got a _problem_?"

"N-no, it's just kinda unusu-"

"Sheldon _Smith_?"

He raised and lowered one shoulder, smiling apologetically. "Point taken."

"Where'd you take it?" She grinned crudely at her joke and turned toward her sleeping bag. Pausing, she turned halfway around, mouth parted slightly in thought, fingernail of her index pensively stroking the pad of her thumb. After a brief moment of thought, she grudgingly made her decision.

_Might... might as well do it under a situation I can control, I guess... This'll minimize the damage... He'd find out anyway, sooner or later._

"Sheldon?" she said softly.

"Hm?"

"There… There's one more thing about me I didn't mention..." Snapping around on her heel, she ignited both hands. A dazzling burst of green light and an angry sound like the ignition of an enormous gas burner filled the room. Twin teardrops of otherworldly power engulfed her hands to the wrists, the tongues of energy crackling halfway to the ceiling.

"This."

She studied his reaction carefully. He recoiled spectacularly, head slamming against the drywall, his face masked by equal parts shock and terror, eyes wide. To her relief, however, he didn't scream, go into blabbering hysterics, or attempt to claw his way through the wall.

"Sooo..." Shego said after a few stunned seconds as nonchalantly as she good, glancing casually from one hand to the other, "I… uh... thought I'd better get this out of the way before we got too far along."

She extinguished her glow, her palms still smoking faintly. After the bright light, the room suddenly plunged into dimness, the shoddy lightbulbs unable to refill the contrast. She blinked twice to readjust. The odor of burnt paint tinged the air; heat from Shego's plasma had scorched the ceiling above her.

Sheldon continued to stare, dilated pupils fixed on the now-empty air above Shego's hands. "That... was... _flaming_ stuff." His chest rose and fell shallowly, voice a broken squeak.

"Yeah. Figured that one out quick enough."

"Coming… from… your… _hands_."

"'Pressive, huh? …I have to admit, you took it a lot better than most people. A lot just faint."

Ignoring her, he continued to squint at where her plasma had been, as if trying to resurrect it through sheer willpower. His breathing slowed, and a pensive look broke over his face "So... that's where..."

Her neck went cold. "What?"

"...I knew... I'd seen that… before... somewhere…"

Wordlessly, Shego stared at him with a horrible disemboweling sensation that the world was crashing down around her. "_What?!_"

Jogged from his trance by her near-scream, he flinched, defensively holding up his palms. "S-sorry, sorry... In between breaks on... projects," he gulped shallowly at the word, "I'd... browse backissues of the _Examiner Online_... Didn't have anything else to do... Came across a few articles an' press snippets mentioning people... people in Go City with... powers... and... stuff... But I'd never put together you and… Never believed..." He trailed off.

Shego relaxed. If he was going just by press releases – and old ones at that – it was likely he knew very little. With a chill, she realized she was kidding herself if she'd thought knowledge of her existence was exclusive to Go City.

To dispel that disturbing notion, she kneed and slipped off her boots, throwing them next to her backpack.

Sheldon tossed on the mattress, grimacing as box springs created pressure points in the cheap mattress. "…Catch the lights?" Nodding, Shego clicked off the overhead. The room faded into semidarkness, but moonlight outside the bay window provided enough ambiance to make out objects.

Without so much as a glance at her roommate, she popped a zipper cover on the front of her uniform and slid the pull-tab all the way down her front. Wriggling out of her bodysuit, she kicked it awkwardly into a corner, leaving herself standing in her lingerie.

She heard Sheldon make an explosive choking noise behind her. Spreading her arms to show off her deltoids, she peered slyly back over her shoulder, grinning. "...You like?"

He merely continued to hyperventilate, not daring to answer. Finally, he settled on a fragmented, "I... I... I... didn't... expect… th-that…"

"Hey... I've only got one set of clothes, and sleeping bags get stuff grody quick." Kneeling, she unzipped her bedroll and slid herself in.

Sheldon hiccupped. "Ri-right... Ah... Oh, God..."

Laughing quietly, Shego twisted onto her side and twined her arms into a makeshift pillow to cushion her head against the hard floor. "Heh… Sweet dreams, punk..."

June 6th, 1996

Boston Mountains, Arkansas

8:34 PM CST

...To be continued...


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

Go City

September 15th, 1986

3:08 PM CST 

"...Uncle! ..._Uncle!_"

Shelly Go laughed triumphantly at Hector's cry. She and her brothers always roughhoused - it was all part of a game they liked to play, "Team Go." One of the three older children, selected through the highly scientific process of rock-paper-scissors, became the evil "Supreme One" while the other two became members of the heroic "Team Go." Their two toddler siblings, Wess and Webb, were too little to be of much help, and usually became valiant American hostages, secret Soviet technology, or sacks of precious jewels.

For this particular game, Shelly was the Supreme One, a title she particularly liked. They'd begun in the yard, and Shelly eventually made a tactical withdrawal to the treehouse with her "hostages." Hector and Meirion followed her – though the attempt was made more difficult by the pelting of water balloons their sister gave them – and the game ended, as it always did, with a climactic battle on the treehouse floor. Usually, Hector Go won.

This time, though, Shelly had pinned her brother, four years her senior, in an unexpected, painful juji-gatame arm lock, and he couldn't break it. At Hector's whine of capitulance, Shelly released her submission hold. The siblings sat up, dusting themselves off. Hector flapped his arm, wincing a little.

"I gotta hand it to ya', Sis – you're really gettin' good!"

"…Yeah..." Meirion Go drawled from the corner, watching the tumble while leaning back in a chair, tipping it insolently back onto two legs. His arms had been "vaporized" early in the battle by Shelly's ray gun – really a super soaker – and he was required to recover in the "dungeon." For his part, Meirion was more than happy to watch indolently from the sidelines. "...Must'a been my superior training."

"Nooooo, I believe it's due to my better conditioning techniques... _Meir_," retorted Hector.

"Hey! Don't call me that!" Meirion shouted, bristling and tipping forward, all four of the chair's feet hitting the wooden decking with a loud bang.

"Meir, Meir, Meir, Meir... You aren't a _Communist_, are you?" Hector taunted.

"I'm not! I'm _not!_ _And stop calling me Meir!_" The second-eldest sibling had been stuck with the nickname ever since the Soviet station _Mir_ launched earlier that year to great fanfare. Shelly had been the first to notice the pronunciation similarities and began taunting her flouty older brother mercilessly, since association with anything Russian was instant anathema on the playground. Hector eagerly picked up the standard once she'd tired of the nickname, and the brand stuck. Even Athena and Thomas, their parents, had begun using it, to their own chagrin; they'd never been able to come up with a proper nickname for "Meirion," and it was a relief not to have to tangle over so many syllables.

Shelly rolled her eyes and turned away, smacking her forehead in disgust. There was no reason to get in the middle of Hector and Meirion's arguments; the slightest provocation sent the two brothers spiraling into shouting matches. "Can't you two, like, just get along for about, like, five _seconds_?" she groused.

"_I'm_ getting along. _He's_ not," said Meirion, thumbing at Hector. The thin, gangly boy was only twelve, but already he had the surly attitude of a teenager.

"What? _You're_ not the one listening to Team Go's leader!"

"_Leader?_ Since _when?_"

"Since I'm the oldest!"

"Ugh, for the love of-" Shelly threw up her hands. "Look, _I_ learned that move on my own from Joey at school! His dad, like, _teaches_ martial arts! You two had _nothing_ to do with –!" Too late. Hector and his younger brother were already deep in an outburst over who was a better trainer. "...You _idiots! _Why do I even _bother?_" she growled, hunching her shoulders.

She turned to look back at the wall facing the main house. "…How much longer is Grandmama gonna taaaaake?" she whined aloud to no one in particular. Plopping her elbows onto a windowsill, she blocked out the fight behind her and gazed at the main house, separated from their treed abode by about two hundred feet of putting-green flat, meticulously-trimmed lawn. She settled her chin onto her upwardly-turned palms, the sharp, slightly aggressive features of her ten-year-old face framed by leafy green branches shifting gently in the mild September breeze.

Below her on the lawn rested detritus of their earlier games – sand dumped from the sandbox; a baseball glove lying forgotten on the ground; chunky, loud-colored Big Wheels tipped onto their sides. The massive oak holding up their fort was one of the few "legacy" trees left after the suburb boom in the 1950's, and the relative lack of other tall vegetation gave the treehouse a sweeping panoramic view of the neighborhood. This fact made it a prime outpost for games of capture-the-flag and kick-the-can, and mini-Stalingrads often raged about the spreading roots to decide who would control it for the next game. A tall wooden privacy fence separated their large plot of backyard from their neighbor's. Identical fences rimmed the perimeters of all the other house lots, dividing the neighborhood into a tidy checkerboard.

Several miles behind her back, to the north, rose the iconic skyline of Go City. A hazy blue aura behind the gray skyscrapers marked the presence of Lake Michigan.

Shelly slowly scanned the flat slab that formed the back of the main house, searching for an opening door that heralded their grandmother bringing out the ritual after-school cookies and milk. There were many doors to check; the solid two-story core had been grown many wings and additions over the years of its long existence. Her parents said her great-grandfather himself had designed the house.

Great-Grandpa Go, her parents had told her, sailed beneath the Statue of Liberty in the 1890's from the area now known as modern-day Yugoslavia. Others clarified it as Montenegro, others Serbia, and still others Bosnia – the area had fragmented so often, no one actually knew for sure. At any rate, after landing in New York, Great-Grandpa migrated West on the promise of free land provided by the Homestead Act, but was caught and drawn like a moth to flame by the power and energy of Go City's meatpacking industry. A metalworker by trade and a dilettante inventor, he made a fortune on an improved door latch for the hundreds of thousands of cattle and refrigerator railcars that slithered through the city like metal snakes.

Once wealthy, he married and had three children, two boys and a girl. His daughter died young of tuberculosis, prompting the family to flee to the suburbs, out of the pollution and disease of the city proper. He designed the original house, where his sons grew up and eventually Thomas and his siblings were born. The family had remained rich (though most of the wealth wisely remained out-of-sight in banks), sustained by his railcar patent, resting in strata above the high middle class but far below the Swifts and Armours.

Following both urban and old-world convention, the extended family eventually filled up most of the block, concentrating the entire Go lineage within a five-house radius. The arrangement made for no-hassle family reunions and virtually guaranteed a steady supply of sitters.

Over the years, the sustainability of the Go fortune eroded as meatpacking decentralized and trucks took over, but Old Man Go beat into his sons a strong blue-collar ethic and would've certainly disowned them had they been content to simply coast on their riches. The lineage's opulence slowly lost momentum along with the city and took a severe drubbing when the economy tanked in the 1970's, but hard work on the part of Shelly's grandparents and parents managed to fight the entropy and maintain stability in the upper middle class.

Shelly sighed, oblivious to most of this history, as her stomach rumbled.

_At least Grandmama gives us cookies,_ she thought, her lofty position providing a view of the roof of one of her aunt's houses located diagonally across the street. That particular aunt was, unfortunately, the most common go-to for last-minute babysitting jobs, and she had a decidedly old-school concept of child discipline.

"'Ey-!" said Webb, the first of Shelly's two-year-old twin brothers.

Shelly turned around as something, like a sound wave with no noise, made her neck prickle. "Huh?"

The toddlers had gotten to their feet and were clinging unsteadily to the sill of the treehouse's west window, their eyes just able to clear the plywood lip. Webb's twin, Wess, pointed up. "Whass thah...?"

Shelly staggered, the invisible pressure splitting along her neck. The world, it seemed, had dropped into a silent fishbowl, and Hector and Meir's arguing voices boomed sacrilegiously loud. She strode quickly to the opposite window, dodging around a small table set in the middle of the room. Her unease gained momentum as the uncomfortable pressure edged down into her chest. Ducking down to the twins' eye-level, she stuck her head through the opening – and gasped. "_Hector! Meir!_"

"Well, _I'm_ – huh?" Meir and Hector broke off their debate and looked quizzically at their sibling.

"_Look!_" Shelly pointed out the treehouse window.

Two-thirds above the cloudless blue horizon, a bright point of light shone in the sky, sparkling like a second sun. Far too intense to be the reflection off an airliner, it did not appear to move – only grow. The dot twinkled like a star, but it was too big... much too big.

As they gazed at it, a rumble invaded their senses, setting the air humming as infrasound transitioned to audible sound waves.

"Get the binoculars!" Hector shouted. Meirion skidded across the tabletop and scrabbled for the lenses in the toy chest. A second later, they were in his hand and he flung them to his brother. Hector jammed them to his eyes and tilted them upward. "Wow…" he murmured, gazing at the object. "That's a weird thingy..." He twisted a dial on the binoculars, bringing the dot into sharper focus. "No, wait! It's... glowing! It looks like it's got a... a bunch of different colors on it! It's...!"

"–A glowing thingy that's headed _right for us!_" Shelly shrieked. Indeed – the light had not shifted sideways at all, and was unnervingly filling their vision like an approaching train headlamp – and it was doing it amazingly quickly. The rumble deepened to a roar, reminding Shelly of liftoffs of the new Space Shuttle. But – something was wrong. Instead of lessening in intensity like an upward-speeding rocket should, the sound only grew, vibrating the ribs in her chest.

Hector lowered the binoculars as he gazed at the object, mouth slowly dropping into an O. Then, as if given an electric shock, he broke the trance holding them all. "_Hey!_ Take one of the twins! I'll get the other one! Team Go, let's get out of here! Move...! Move! _Move!_"

Meirion bolted, scrambling for the ladder.

Shelly nodded, snatching up one of the twins and vaulting across the treehouse porch. She looked up as she frantically clawed her way down the rickety wooden ladder; Hector was nearly on top of her, clutching Wess, or Webb – she didn't know. The roar consumed them, rattling her skull and her guts; light became blinding; heat, scorching. Hysterical, she wondered if the Shuttle was _landing_ on them. She glanced back down – Meir was steadying the ladder and accepted one of the twins with open arms as Shelly handed it to him. She jumped off the ladder to clear the landing zone for her eldest brother, performing a 180-degree spin in midair and landing three-point on the grass, facing the main house. As she looked up, she saw her parents opening the door, Grandmama Go with them, clutching a tray of cookies.

"MOMMY! DADDDY! GRANDMAMA!" she screamed. "RUN! RUN! **RUN! RU**-"

She launched toward them. The world froze in mid-leap, fixed onto film under the glare of a massive white flashbulb, tearing open and melting away like celluloid over flame.

The last thing she saw was her parents and grandmother, staring dumbfoundedly upward at something they would never comprehend.

As the image burned into her eyeballs, a blinding green light enveloped her, and her world dissolved in a swirling kaleidoscopic howl of color, noise, and pain.

* * *

"_Gah!_"

Shego doubled over and slammed upright, the flash seared on the inside of her retinas.

Her yell hovered, disembodied and echoing, around her ears for a few seconds before fading away into drained quiet. Gasping, muscles abruptly paralyzed, she stared unfocusedly at the lump of her feet in the sleeping bag. The silence hummed, pulsing with the beat of blood in her ears.

As she fully regained consciousness, she leveraged her mouth shut and slowly uncoiled onto her back. Massaging her forehead with her thumb and index finger, she closed her eyes and took several deep, shaky breaths as the burned-in image of her nightmare, her flashback, her memory, trickled away like water. The ghostly reverb of her yell tape-looped inside her head.

Recovering, Shego glanced over at the bed from her low position on the floor. Her outburst hadn't awakened Sheldon – _or whoever he is, _she mentally interjected – and he continued to snore lightly, flat on his back amongst a churned bedspread.

Trembling, the woman realized she was drenched in sweat and her sleeping bag had become slick and clammy. Wriggling awkwardly out of its clingy embrace, she staggered up, her bare skin suddenly chilly as the open night air sucked at it. Damp with hot sweat, the black sports bra and matching boyshorts she had slept in quickly turned cold. Vivid green eyes adjusting to the gloom, she stumbled to the window seat and leaned against the wall of the bay niche, leg stretched across the cushion, toes brushing the opposite wall. Watery moonlight from a thinly overcast night diffused through the glass, lightening the room slightly. In the silver gleam, the contrast between Shego's nightwear and skin was striking. At the boundary of hem and arm, her skin formed a white halo around the strap.

Shivering as her body cooled, Shego hugged herself tightly around the shoulders and let her head drop toward her chest, eyes closing again.

_Damn..._ she swore silently, spitting a slice of air through her teeth, _Damn... Haven't had that one in years..._ _Years..._ _Thought I'd gotten rid of it... _Tipping sideways, she rested the side of her head against the cool window, black hair crushed flat against the glass. _Maybe it's just shock... I've had a busy day..._ The tip of her mouth twitched with a malicious smile. _Did a lotta new stuff... Gotta sort it out... Gotta figure out what to do ne– _

"Shego?"

"_What?_" she yelped in surprise, whipping around, hands sliding off her shoulders as she spun, right palm igniting.

In the flickering green light of her glow, she saw Sheldon sitting lopsidedly up in bed, tousled hair going in six different directions, squinting hard and mousy-eyed without his glasses. His eyes shone blank and glassy as they caught the bright aura engulfing her fingers.

Shego noticed the reflective sheen of his eyes expand as he stared, rapt, at a point in space just to the left of her neck, before he checked himself and glanced embarrassedly away, his whole head shying.

She glanced to her left. One shoulder strap of her bra had slipped off her shoulder as she spun out of her self-hug, and it now looped conspicuously above her upper arm like a solar flare.

Rolling her eyes, she casually swung the strap back into the dip of her collarbone; she'd lived around her brothers long enough to become indifferent to their wide-eyed stares at the strange habits of girls' clothing.

"…Sorry," she said coolly, extinguishing the flame, "Startled me… Thought I was the only one up."

Sheldon waited until he heard the elastic slap back in place before meeting her gaze again. "I... heard something… Thought it was part of my dream...."

"I'm a rough sleeper… bonked my head on the wardrobe," she lied, not wanting to reveal to this near-stranger she'd had a nightmare. Folding her arms, she leaned against the niche, lower back resting against the window-seat ledge. "What time is it?"

Twisting around, Sheldon lifted his wristwatch off the nightstand and held it close to his eyes. "Uh… 3:46."

"Ugh… Sorry to wake you up."

"Don'… Don'…" Sheldon yawned widely. "No problem…" He dropped his watch back on the table with a clunk. He paused, looking down as he twisted the covers on his lap. Looking up, he gazed shyly at her. "…And… um… thanks… for today…" he said, so quietly she almost didn't catch it. "Thanks… for… for… everything."

"Whatever..." Her face set. "Why were those goons after you…? 'Cause if what I did puts me on some kind of hit-list, bud, you're getting dropped on the side of the road."

Sheldon looked down quickly, fidgeting frantically with the covers.

"You're going to put a hole in those. I'm waiting."

Lifting his head, he met her eyes and took a deep breath. "A... few years ago... I… I think it was '93, there was this... guy...."

He broke off, frowning. "Stop smiling, it wasn't like _that_. I can't tell you much, but it wasn't like that. I was this… this… stringy white-collar burnt-out loser of a computer programmer from Seattle-"

"Looks like things haven't changed much, hmm?"

"Shut up. I – why are you smiling _now_?"

"You just told a girl who's got flaming crap coming out of her hands to shut up." She cocked her head to one side, grinning. "I think I'm beginning to like you."

"Thanks… are you always this sarcastic?"

"Sarcasm and masturbation are what keep me sane. Now where were you in this story of yours…?"

"I… I…" He gaped at her, taken aback. "I… programmer… yeah, burnt-out programmer, and his guy – he…" Sheldon's voice dropped to a reverent whisper, "He had _dreams_…He had these… _visions _of a better world… He was looking for a bunch of smart burnt-out fucks like me to help him… I mean… I mean, I'm sitting in some windowless mainframe nook day after day after day under these god-damn lights, and they hum and they hum and they _hum_… and it rains all the time outside, I'm just maintaining the gears inside… And he was asking us to help him do something that _mattered_…"

Frozen in her lean against the window seat, the inside of Shego's head had gone very quiet. His voice was pleading, justifying, but the emotion in his words and his abrupt swearing impressed her. "I… don't suppose you… had any… any… siblings… did you?"

"No. Only kid… So… Me and him and a bunch of other nerds went out into the middle of Montana somewhere in this beat-up old school bus… He'd bought up an old missile silo from the Cold War – I think it was Atlas F – and he had us clear it out, along with a bunch of these nutty militia guys he'd hired…"

"Ouch… Bet that was messy."

Sheldon flinched. "Yeah… Four inches of rat shit is... not fun. The militia guys built floors into the missile tube – they were able to fit ten stories into that thing, can you believe it? After we got the place up all cleaned out and wired up with electricity and telecom – Internet, too; this guy was _way_ ahead of his time… He… put in all this weird equipment...."

He trailed off.

"And...?"

"And... and then he… he… burned the bus…" In the moonlight, Sheldon's already white face turned monochrome. "I… thought that was kinda freaky… But I thought it'd still be OK. You... you don't know how this guy could… he'd speak, and… we'd all just want to follow him. No mind control, but… God, that man could speak."

He paused shakily. Shego sat on the window seat, hands moving to her knees as she leaned forward.

"I thought it wouldn't be bad… and it wasn't, really. Not for me. I was in data processing in the former launch control center. I had air-conditioning, electricity, Internet modem access, good meals… And after about a year, I realized this was Seattle II. Nothing'd changed. I was still a… a… fuckin' computer nanny… Once I came to that realization, I started actually looking at the data and files I was processing… And…. And… I realized… I realized…" He broke off and shuddered violently.

"Sheldon, what were you doing?"

The former programmer squeaked and shook his head vehemently.

"Sheldon, what were you _doing?_"

He shook his head vigorously again. "I… may-maybe later… C-can't tell you now. Not yet. Don't… don't know you enough."

"Alright… Forget it. How'd you get from there to some godforsaken diner in Arkansas?"

"I'd finally had enough, figured out enough… And I… got out."

"How?"

"_I. got. out..._'kay?" The tightness of his voice indicated it wasn't a topic he wanted to discuss. "Don't know how I got to the surface, but… I did. Boosted a truck, drove it until daybreak, parked it over some railroad tracks, walked to a Greyhound station. I got wind of the derailment a few days later... I knew they'd notice that the truck and I were missing, but I hoped they'd think I committed suicide. It wasn't until yesterday I realized they'd actually been following me, but I kept zigzagging around and switching buses to throw off followers… I guess that's why I got here, instead of winding up dead on the Nebraska border." He smiled weakly, clearly terrified.

Shego leaned back, fingertips pressed together, chin resting in the V between her middle and index fingers. "So… where are… or were… you headed?"

Sheldon raised and lowered on shoulder. "I haven't really gotten anything in mind… South. New Orleans. Miami. Cuba."

The woman shook her head. "Bad idea. You've got more and more small towns as you go south… More chances to get spotted. New Orleans isn't too particularly big… And, really, Cuba? This isn't the 1950's."

"Any suggestions, then?"

"Well, I think I'm headed for LA…" She waved a hand. "How big is your boss's outfit?"

"About a hundred people total, living in the silo and in a few Quonset huts outside."

"And heavies like Thing One and Thing Two?"

"Eight, I… think. Twelve max."

"Shit…" Shego sighed and rubbed her forehead. "I should've broken their heads open... Still, twelve would be manageable, if they've got the same IQ levels as your boyfriends yesterday."

"Wait... You mean you're going to –"

"Heeey, nothing like a bit of danger to make you feel alive, eh? One day out and I was worried I was gonna start get fuckin' _bored_. Can't have that now, can we…?" She grinned sardonically. "I'm already in trouble with your lot, if those goons have called back in, and until we get to a big enough city to let you disappear entirely, it'll be helpful to have another set of eyes."

"R-really? You've going to help _me? _You're going to protect m-"

"Like hell, sport. I'm not your damn bodyguard. You are an FNG. You don't know how the bad guys think, you don't know when you're being tracked, you don't know how to survive."

"And how would you know how to any bett–" He broke off as Shego stood up and stalked over to the bedside, expression disdainful. A dark shadow spilled across the sheets as her head blocked out the moonlight.

"I've seen it firsthand for the past six years, and for the past twenty-four hours, I've been living it." Sheldon scuttled into the headboard as she began jabbing him in the chest. "_You_ will follow orders from _me_. When I tell you to do something, you will _do_ it. When I tell you to _floor_ it, you will _floor_ it. When I tell you to _run_, you will _run_. And when I tell you to get_ lost_, you will clear _out_ like there's a cruise missile looking for your ass. _Got that?_"

His head bobbled. "Y-yes ma'am."

"Good. What time is it?"

Sheldon scrabbled for his watch. "4:02."

Shego stretched, hands arching above her head, and moved toward her sleeping bag. "Right, we'll get an hour and a half more sleep, then get on the highway before there's too many people out. We're heading west. We'll discuss options on the road."

"Oh. But why wes–"

"Because I said so," Shego growled as she knelt and opened the bag's zipper.

"Oh." Silence fell as Shego zipped herself and thudded heavily onto her shoulder. Then, "…Shego?"

"Hm?"

"Is your head feeling better?"

"My what?"

"You'd hit it on the wardrobe."

"Oh... Yeah. It is. Thanks."

"Night…"

"Night."

As Shego drifted into sleep, her mind crackled with plans for their drive and escape, pushing any thoughts of home, or her family, deep back into the ether, where she hoped they belonged.

* * *

To be continued…


End file.
